Poetry Friday: "Where I Come From" by Elizabeth Brewster

Happy belated New Brunswick Day!

Yes, belated. The day was celebrated proper in these here parts on Monday, August 6, so this post is four days late. Yet Poetry Friday always falls on a Friday, so never the twain shall meet. You can't argue against the laws of time and space and provincial holidays.

Where I Come From

People are made of places. They carry with themhints of jungles or mountains, a tropic graceor the cool eyes of sea gazers. Atmosphere of citieshow different drops from them, like the smell of smogor the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,nature tidily plotted with a guidebook;or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,chromium-plated offices; smell of subwayscrowded at rush hours.

Where I come from, peoplecarry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint,with yards where hens and chickens circle about,clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhousesbehind which violets grow. Spring and winterare the mind's chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.

A door in the mind blows open, and there blowsa frosty wind from fields of snow.

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